Influence of the uptake of electric vehicles on the impact on climate change of an entire future vehicle fleet, a 2020 Brussels perspective

Electric vehicles have a clear benefit over conventional vehicles when it comes to the impact on climate change. Underlying paper describes how fast (or slow) the uptake of electric vehicles can change the overall performance of an entire fleet on climate change. The benefit of a large share of electric vehicles in a fleet is compared to a future fleet with energy efficient conventional vehicles (petrol and diesel). The study area is the car fleet of Brussels, Belgium. The time horizon is 2020. It is investigated how big the climate benefits can be of a potential uptake of electric vehicles in a fleet. Two different vehicle fleets of the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) are compared with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), consisting of a ‘business as usual’ and an ‘EV uptake’ set of vehicles. Future electricity mixes, with more renewable energy, are taken into account. It is concluded that a moderate uptake of electric vehicles (as described in the paper) leads to a yearly emission reduction of 10 kton CO2 in 2020 for the Brussels Fleet compared to a reference scenario. This means that in 2020 it is possible to have a fleet in Brussels consisting of 1,8% BEV’s 1,6% PHEV’s that reduces 1,9% (or 10 kton CO2) of the yearly CO2 emissions when compared to a ‘Business as usual’ scenario

Environmental performance of a battery electric vehicle: a descriptive Life Cycle Assessment approach

In this paper the environmental impacts of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) are assessed in a Belgian context. A full descriptive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is performed, including the well-to-wheel (WTW) emissions (for a BEV these are the emissions coming from the electricity production) and the cradle-tograve emissions (related directly and indirectly to the production and the end-of-life (EOL) processing of the vehicle). First an overview of the energy consumption of the different vehicle technologies is given. This clearly shows that battery electric vehicles are less energy intensive than other vehicle technologies. Secondly, the environmental impacts of a BEV during its entire life cycle are assessed in detail. This illustrates the relative importance of the manufacturing step for a BEV and the strongly reduced environmental impact when recycling the battery. Furthermore, the influence of the electricity supply mix on the overall environmental impact of a BEV is assessed. The investigated electricity production plants include renewable and non-renewable resources: wind, hydro, nuclear, biogas, natural gas, oil and coal. The assessed impact categories are: acidification, human health and the greenhouse effect (GHE). A BEV has a better scores than a petrol vehicle except for the full coal or oil electricity production scenario, for which the BEV can have a bad score for human health and acidification

Effects of integration of the electric mobility in the Italian energy sector: How to account for them in an LCA perspective

LCAs on electric mobility are providing a plethora of diverging results. The selection of the electricity mix used to recharge the vehicles has been proved to be a key aspect in determining the overall results. 26 articles published from 2008 to 2018 have been investigated to find the extent and the reason behind this deviation. The major cause of the diverging results has been identified in a lack of clear guidelines for the selection of the appropriate electricity mix. Marginal and averge electricity mixes are often used as a proxy for the development of either a consequential or an attributional LCA. According to our literature survey results, if the aim is to identify the consequences of a widespread introduction of electric vehicles, a larger system boundary has to be included (i.e. including the mutual effect of transportation on the power sector and viceversa). As a proof of concept, we modeled the effect of introducing a consistent amount of electric vehicles in the Italian fleet in 2030

Second life application of automotive Li-ion batteries: Ageing during first and second use and life cycle assessment

The commercialisation of electric vehicles has accelerated in the global market, responding to the need of global CO2 emissions reduction and of energy security. This, in turn, has led to rapidly increasing demand for high-energy density traction Li-ion batteries, and will also translate into an increase of waste xEV batteries after having reached first use End-of-Life in vehicles. Collected batteries are typically recycled. However, their residual capacity could be used in second use applications before recycling."br" The performance of Li-ion cells, namely change of capacity and impedance during calendar and cycle ageing has been analysed beyond the end of first use. Fresh cells, cells aged in the laboratory, and cells aged under real-world driving conditions, have been characterised applying second use stationary grid-scale duty cycles."br" An analysis of the resource efficiency of second-use application of Li-ion batteries from vehicles is presented. This includes an assessment of materials needs and a Material Flow Analysis to estimate the amount of available batteries entering the waste flow after their use in the automotive sector. An adapted life cycle based methodology is presented – taking in consideration experimental performance data – to produce a holistic analysis considering technical, environmental, economical perspective of the foreseen second-life system

Sustainability Assessment of Second Life Application of Automotive Batteries

Sustainability Assessment of Second Life Application of Automotive Batteries - presentation of the SASLAB projec

Life Cycle Assessment of innovative fuel blends for passenger cars with a spark-ignition engine: A comparative approach

Passenger cars account for 44% of greenhouse gas emissions from transport in the European Union. To align with the European Green Deal by 2050, road transport should develop and deploy alternative technologies to reduce emissions by 90%. In this work, the Life Cycle Assessment methodology was applied to assess the environmental impacts of a medium (C-segment) internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) and a medium (C-segment) battery electric vehicle (BEV). For the ICEV, four innovative petrol blends were considered. These innovative blends consist of petrol and fuels such as fossil ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE), bio-ETBE, bionaphtha, bioethanol, methanol, biomethanol, and e-methanol. After a preliminary selection of biofuel alternatives, all the assessed blends potentially guarantee a slight reduction in climate change (from 0.8% to 10.1%) compared to the reference petrol car. The blend containing bionaphtha contributed the least to climate change. The BEV released about 41% less greenhouse gas emissions than the reference car. Although the ICEV and the BEV showed a reduction in climate change and fossil resources, the picture is less straightforward for the other 14 impact categories